It’s official: WiFi doesn’t stand for anything. Building on a post from last week discussing the fact that the acronym “WiFi” (or Wi-Fi, or 802.11, or whatever you choose to call it) BoingBoing has an interesting follow-up post today that includes a letter from Phil Belanger, a founding member of the WiFi Alliance (responsible for choosing the name):
Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything.It is not an acronym. There is no meaning.
Wi-Fi and the ying yang style logo were invented…We needed something that was a little catchier than “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence”…
…The only reason that you hear anything about “Wireless Fidelity” is some of my colleagues in the group were afraid. They didn’t understand branding or marketing. They could not imagine using the name “Wi-Fi” without having some sort of literal explanation. So we compromised and agreed to include the tag line “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” along with the name. This was a mistake and only served to confuse people and dilute the brand…
…”Wireless Fidelity” – what does that mean? Nothing. It was a clumsy attempt to come up with two words that matched Wi and Fi. That’s it.
So we were smart to hire Interbrand to come up with the name and logo. We were dumb to confuse and water down their efforts by adding the meaningless tag line…
*sigh*
To think that some people earn their living promoting completely nonsensical things simply because they sound catchy and will get people to buy a product. It’s that damn marketing jargon again!